Our Editors

Dr Sarah Armstrong

Sarah Armstrong’s debut novel, The Insect Rosary, was published by Sandstone Press in 2015. Her second novel, The Devil in the Snow, was published in 2017 and her latest novel The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt was published at the end of 2018. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, as well as magazines such as Mslexia and Litro. She reads and writes in a range of genres, specialising in literary fiction, historical fiction and psychological thrillers.

Sarah has extensive and varied experience over many years teaching creative writing both in university and community contexts. She has taught undergraduate Creative Writing with the Open University since the course started in 2006 and also teaches Advanced Creative Writing. In addition, Sarah teaches on a variety of interdisciplinary courses which has enabled her to explore links between literature and philosophy, music, history, classical studies, religion, history of science and art history.

Sarah has also led successful private courses in short story and novel writing at a local bookshop, and works privately with individuals, culminating in a two-book contract for one writer. Having undertaken writing courses of her own, Sarah has a good awareness of what it is like to receive feedback, as well as how to improve a piece of writing, and this informs the way she responds to the work of other writers.

Dan Blythe

Daniel Blythe is the author of 20 books including three dark literary thrillers, The Cut (Penguin), Losing Faith (Hamish Hamilton) and This is the Day (Allison and Busby) and most recently his work has been aimed at young readers (Shadow Runners, Emerald Greene and a new SF novel in progress).

Daniel has taught on the Creative Writing MA at Sheffield Hallam University encompassing work on novels in progress across a wide range of genres including literary, crime, historical fiction and fantasy.

For five years he led writing workshops on ‘Writing a Novel’ and ‘Being Published’. He has also led writing days with children and teenagers in over 300 primary and secondary schools, has been Patron of Reading for two schools and has appeared at festivals including Hay, Winchester and Off The Shelf.

Daniel is currently on the committee of CWIG (the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group) at the Society of Authors. Daniel lives in Yorkshire with his wife Rachel and their two teenage children.

He has been published by Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, Allison and Busby, BBC Books, Chicken House, Scholastic and Badger, and he is represented by a leading London agent. He has written for the BBC’s series of original Doctor Who books, including Doctor Who: The Dimension Riders (Virgin Books), Doctor Who: Infinite Requiem (Virgin Books) and Doctor Who: Autonomy (BBC Books).

Jon Curzon

Jon works at the literary agency Artellus, and also as an editor for the writing.co.uk literary consultancy. Artellus is a small, long-established agency that has represented writers including Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess. In a team of five, Jon works closely with the agency founders in looking for new and innovative writing. This has involved working with writers from a post-Jungian psychologist, on a self-help title, to a drug store clerk writing experimental fiction.

Jon specialises in thrillers and literary fiction and has a keen interest in young adult manuscripts, science fiction and fantasy though works across all genres of fiction and non-fiction.

Jon graduated with first class honours in literature, specialising in modern American fiction, and has worked in editorial at The Economist, publicity at Vintage (Random House), and at the Eve White literary agency - where he handled submissions.

Kate Dunn

Kate Dunn comes from a long line of writers and actors: her great-great-grandfather Hugh Williams was a Welsh chartist who published revolutionary poetry, her grandfather, another Hugh Williams, was a celebrated actor and playwright and her uncles are the poet Hugo Williams and the actor Simon Williams.

Kate followed her family into the theatre and acted in repertory, toured around Britain, the Far and Middle East and appeared in three West End plays, as well as a number of television productions. Her career changed with the birth of her son, Jack, and the publication of her first novel, Rebecca’s Children, by Barrie and Jenkins. This was followed by the publication of Always and Always, the Wartime Letters of Hugh and Margaret Williams, edited by Kate, published by John Murray and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In October 1998 John Murray issued Exit Through the Fireplace – The Great Days of Rep and the sequel to this, Do Not Adjust Your Set – The Early Days of Live Television, was published in 2003.

Kate has since focused mainly on fiction and is a published author with a great deal of experience in manuscript appraisal, having taught Creative Writing for more than twenty years at the universities of Warwick, Cardiff and Bristol, where she has had the profound pleasure of seeing some of her students move from beginners to published writers.

The Line Between Us was published by Endeavour Press in 2016, alongside a reissue of Kate’s first novel. Her latest book, The Dragonfly, inspired by many years of boating in France, was published in 2017 after it was shortlisted for the Virginia Prize for Fiction.

Kate has a PhD in Drama from Manchester University.

Sandra Glover

Born in Manchester and now living in South Cumbria, Sandra Glover is a qualified teacher and creative writing tutor, who began writing children’s books in 1997. Sandra is a published children's author of 26 titles, mainly with Andersen Press and EPS, with 'Hairy Horror' being the latest. Her novels for Young Adults and younger readers have been translated into over twenty languages. They have won and been short-listed for awards both in Britain and abroad.

Combining her teaching and writing skills Sandra has run creative writing workshops for children and adults and has sixteen years’ experience as a literary consultant.

Lindsay Hawdon

Lindsay Hawdon is a former Sunday Times and Telegraph travel column-ist and a writer of fiction and has been a writer of fiction and travel for the past 20 years. She still writes regularly for The Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, The Australian and the LA Times among other publications.

On leaving school, she spent three years travelling around Europe, Africa and India, hitching rides and sleeping under canvas. She has since travelled to over seventy countries. Her travel column “An Englishwoman Abroad”, began in the Sunday Telegraph in 2000 and ran for seven years.

Her articles for The Sunday Times, “Have Kids Will travel” followed a year’s trip travelling solo with her two young boys around South East Asia. Their most recent trip, featured in a monthly column for the Independent called “The Rainbow Hunters”, took them around the world to find the origin of colour, raising money for the charity War Child as they travelled.

She has had numerous short stories published and in 2015 her first novel Jakob’s Colours, a historical fiction novel which was shortlisted for The Authors Club First Novel Award, was published by Hodder and Stough-ton. She is currently writing her second novel and is represented by Susan Armstrong at Conville and Walsh.

Lindsay has taught fiction, travel and nature writing in a variety of places including residential courses at Bath Spa University and Prior Park College in Bath. She currently works as a mentor and visiting lecturer at Bath Spa University, runs a writer’s workshop now in its third year, and has a wide experience of editing and proofreading.

Will Mawhood

Will's meticulous editing skills and eye for detail mean that he specialises in copy-editing for the writing.co.uk authors. After graduating from the University of Liverpool in 2009 with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature, Will Mawhood worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language, copy-editor and literary consultant. As well as successfully mentoring aspiring and published authors of fiction, he has completed dozens of well-received copy-edits and advisory reports for Writing Ltd which have been described as "inspirational", "thought-provoking" and "exceptionally helpful".

As well as the UK, Will has lived in Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Romania and Ukraine and travelled widely throughout Europe and beyond. His articles on travel, history and politics in post-Communist Europe have appeared in a variety of publications, and in 2015 he started Deep Baltic (www.deepbaltic.com), the first English-language online source focusing on long-form and in-depth cultural and travel articles from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which has built up a following among those interested to the region. He is currently working on an insider's guide to Riga, where he spends most of his time, for an international online publication.

Antonia Prescott

Antonia Prescott worked for nearly ten years as a children’s book editor at Frances Lincoln Publishers. She has a wide range of expertise covering poetry, story books and fiction and non-fiction picture books.

Antonia is also a freelance writer of educational books for children and a translator. Among her publications are translations of Jacques Duquennoy’s award-winning French picture books, Ghost Party and Loch Ness Ghosts. She lives on the Wirral with her family.

Stuart Sharp

Stuart has been working as ghost writer, editor and freelance writer for over eight years. He writes novels and full-length non-fiction and has spent time writing biographies, producing poetry, writing short stories and non-fiction articles.

Stuart has worked on more than seventy novels, biographies and short story collections to date and over twenty-five young adult novels encompassing fantasy, thrillers and straightforward teen dramas. Stuart has also worked on two quintets of romance novels for a New York Times Bestselling author, fantasy novels, a detective novel set in medieval Ireland and adaptations of horror scripts and graphic novels to novel format.

Stuart is the author of four published novels and also works on literal translations and editing and feedback for authors at the beginning stage of their work.

Stuart has a PhD in Medieval History, an MA in Historical Studies and a BA (Hons) in History.

Toby Venables

Toby Venables is a novelist, screenwriter and lecturer in Historical Fiction, Screenwriting, Film and Journalism at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

Toby has nearly 20 years of experience as a journalist and copywriter and has launched magazines in Cambridge, Peterborough, Oxford. Toby has been the recipient of a radio advertising award, and is a winner of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize.

His first novel (published by Abaddon Books) was The Viking Dead – a historical-zombie-SF mashup which has been described as "A fantastic mix of history, violence and horror" and "ludicrous fun".

Toby is also author of the Hunter of Sherwood trilogy – now on its third book (published Feb 2017) – in which, with a different spin on a classic tale, Guy of Gisburne is the hero, and Hood a bit of a rotter.

Toby is a keen reader of historical fiction, horror and science fiction.